It’s not the first time the world’s largest retailer would be taken to task for corporate wheeling and dealing both at home and abroad.

Dealing With Disgruntled Employees

Sergio Cicero Zapata, who worked in Walmart de Mexico’s real estate division until 2004, not only blew the whistle on Bentonville but also revealed that the company squelched the investigation and chose not to report evidence promptly to federal prosecutors. This puts Walmart in potential violation of the U.S.’s major anti-bribery law the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

Walmart issued a rebuttal yesterday saying they take compliance with the FCPA “very seriously and the company is “committed to having a strong and effective global anti-corruption program in every country in which we operate,” right before pointing out, “Many of the alleged activities in The New York Times article are more than six years old. If these allegations are true, it is not a reflection of who we are or what we stand for. We are deeply concerned by these allegations and are working aggressively to determine what happened.”

But what started as Cicero doing his employer’s bidding to adhere to a strict anti-corruption policy and report incidences immediately, was then turned into a quick open-and-shut investigation for Walmart led by Juan Francisco Torres-Landa, a Harvard-trained lawyer in Mexico City. He concluded that Cicero was pissed about being passed over and furthermore, that he was skimming part of the bribes he was orchestrating because his wife was an attorney for one of the “gestores,” who often act as middlemen in Mexican payoff schemes.

Sound familiar?

Walmart’s been successful in the past at turning employee rumblings around. Even when they number 1.5 million. That’s how many women filed suit against Walmart claiming they’d received lower pay than their male co-workers and were passed over for promotions. The case which originated in 1999, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was tossed out in favor of Walmart.